observations precede general ideas, and not _vice versa_, as is
usually and unfortunately the case; as though a child should come
feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the
rhyme! The ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the
strict sense of the word, _prejudices_, on the mind of the child,
before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is
thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience
through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his
ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they
ought to be.

A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself,
and he sees them from many sides; but this method of learning is not
nearly so short or so quick as the method which employs abstract
ideas and makes hasty generalizations about everything. Experience,
therefore, will be a long time in correcting preconceived ideas, or
perhaps never bring its task to an end; for wherever a man finds that
the aspect of things seems to contradict the general ideas he has
formed, he will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial
and one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and deny
that it stands in any contradiction at all with his preconceived
notions, in order that he may thus preserve them uninjured. So it is
that many a man carries about a burden of wrong notions all his life
long--crotchets, whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last become
fixed ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his
fundamental ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his
own way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his ideas
ready-made from other people; and this it is that makes him--as it
makes how many others!--so shallow and superficial.